This is the Environment Show. It's about our stewardship of the Earth and the beauty
and mystery of life in all its forms. I'm Peter Burling.
Coming up, Clinton's proposed environmental budget has a lot more money for open space
and livable communities, but environmentalists are still angry about appropriations to help
the coal industry and finance timber sales from national forests. Casinos and Mississippi
are bringing in the green, but the Gulf Coast is not getting any greener as a result.
We ride the waves with churfers who have organized to protect the ecosystems upon which their
sport depends. And to the Earth calendar, Poxytani Phil has come and gone. His handlers
say when it comes to predicting whether spring will come, he has never gone wrong. These
stories and more coming up on the Environment Show.
You're listening to the Environment Show and I'm Peter Burling. The president has just
submitted a proposed federal budget which, if enacted, will do more for the environment
than any budget he has previously submitted. How much of it will pass will be determined
in skirmishes with congressional committees which will continue until September. This year,
the environmental stakes are high.
Well, in a tight money year, I think the president has proposed FY2000 budget is very strong
on the environment. Overall, up 5 percent from last year. And the budget proposes a number
of major new initiatives, including a land legacy initiative which would create a permanent
stream of funding at a billion dollars a year for federal land acquisition, for transfer
in part to states and local governments for green space and parks and also for coastal
states. So that's the first time an administration has ever proposed a full funding of the so-called
Land and Water Conservation Fund created in the mid-1970s.
That was George Frampton, acting chair of the Council of Environmental Quality in Washington
speaking from his office in the White House. He adds, there are increases across the board
5 percent for the Environmental Protection Agency, 8 percent for the park service, and
9 to 10 percent for land management agencies. The money will come from operating revenues
since budget surpluses have been reserved for social security. The president's budget
proposal is designed to impact the places we live.
Well, there's also a major initiative to make communities more livable that includes,
among other things, a very significant transfer of transportation department money to public
transport. We've proposed a new $100 million west coast salmon restoration fund that would
be create a partnership between the federal government and the states of California, Washington
and Oregon and Alaska and tribes to try to restore coastal salmon runs. And some major
new provisions to deal with climate change, including additional tax credits for fuel
efficient equipment and automobiles and a new EPA fund that would help businesses invest
in new technology that both cleaned up the air and reduced greenhouse gas emissions at
the same time.
Frampton says under the initiative, localities and conjunction with the Environmental Protection
Agency will be able to finance open space, brownfield development and clean water projects
through better America bonds. The person who buys the bond would get the federal tax credits
in lieu of interest. Despite the increases in funding, some environmental organizations
disapprove of portions of the budget plan. Ana Orelio is a staff scientist with the US Public
Interest Research Group.
USPERG says that this budget is a mixed bag when it comes to the environment. When it comes
to protecting public health and the planet, we applaud several of his land acquisition
initiatives and other climate change initiatives, but we're extremely disappointed that President
Clinton continues to support subsidies to multi-billion dollar polluting corporations.
Well, for example, our national forest are under attack by corporate loggers. We have
been urging the Clinton administration to cut subsidies for logging on our national
forest. The general accounting office just came out with a report that showed the taxpayers
lost a billion dollars over three years in below cost timber sales, and yet the president's
budget continues to fully fund the timber sale program.
Aurelio is also upset about requests which will benefit the coal and oil industries.
They're asking for $122 million for coal research and development. They're asking for $50
million for petroleum research and development.
And then finally, there is the oxymoronic clean coal technology program that's been really
a laughing stock for a long time. This is a program that's supposed to give money to companies
to help them burn coal cleaner, although of course they're never going to figure out a way
to burn coal without releasing carbon dioxide, which is the chief culprit in global warming.
And it's going to be difficult if not impossible to figure out a way to burn coal without releasing
mercury, which is a potent neurotoxin and is caused 50,000 water bodies in this country
to be declared the fish from those water bodies that are declared unfit for human consumption.
So we're not going to be able to solve those problems regarding coal. And so the real answer
is we're going to have to shift away from coal. And yet this clean coal technology program
continues to eat up our tap dollars if we continue to fund it.
In contrast, Daniel Leshoff, senior scientist at the National Resources Defense Council,
a national environmental group, applauded programs in the budget which forward the campaign
to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Perhaps the biggest piece is a $3.6 billion tax incentive package that's aimed at commercializing
advanced technology vehicles that can get substantial increases in fuel economy and therefore
reduced global warming pollution without sacrificing size or convenience.
I'd also include tax credit of $2,000 for energy efficient new homes and some expansion
of tax credits for renewable electricity production.
On balance, with the exception of coal gas and timber programs, environmentalists find
a lot of the president's proposals to be enthusiastic about as reflected by Courtney
Cough, legislative director of Friends of the Earth.
Well, overall, we're very pleased with the administration's budget. It's a good budget
for the environment, spanning from the better America bonds to the lippability agenda that
includes the land's legacy proposal and also including things like the $730 million
for the package, if you will, to help deal with climate change extremely positive for
the environment.
How much of the president's environmental budget gets enacted remains to be seen.
However, since many of the new funding initiatives involve partnerships with state and local
governments, the administration hopes it will generate local political support which will
translate into votes on the floor of the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate.
Southern Mississippi is in the midst of an economic boom, due mainly to a rapid increase
in the number of casinos along the Gulf Coast. While the gaming industry started out small
in the earlier part of this decade, the casinos in Mississippi are becoming bigger than ever.
But as with many prosperous industries, there are environmental trade-offs.
The environment shows Stephen Westcott reports.
Additionally, gaming boats had to sail out to international waters before passengers
could place bets.
Then in the early 1990s, the Mississippi legislature voted to allow casinos to operate along the
shoreline.
Voters in two of the three counties along the state's Gulf Coast also approved gaming.
Doxide barges were brought in first, but with time, the casinos and hotels grew in
size as well as cost.
Well far, 11 casinos have been built right on the coast with at least a dozen more casinos
and hotels with permits pending. Some of these are huge buildings with parking garages,
costing hundreds of millions of dollars.
Steve Oivanky, director of coastal ecology, at the Department of Marine Resources in Mississippi
says many of these coastal areas were once run down turn of the century seafood processing
plants.
It was pretty much a rundown, blighted brown field type area.
All that has been raised now.
Now it's a glitzy Las Vegas style strip.
Looks a whole lot better than it did before with rundown dilapidated shacks and buildings.
As with any development project, environmental impact studies have to be conducted, and
it's the state's job to protect water quality and issue certain permits.
The EPA, National Marine Fisheries Service, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife also comment on
the process.
The Army Corps of Engineers provides permits for structures and wood wetland areas are filled
in.
Ronald Krizman, chief of the Corps's regulator office for the district that includes Southern
Mississippi says so far 11 acres of wetlands have been filled in and says his office tries
to make sure the adverse effects from filling wetlands are minimized.
He says other factors are also considered during the permitting process.
We look at the visual aesthetics aspect.
We look at the cultural aspects, other any archaeological assets there that would be impacted
by this construction in dangerous species.
So we look at pretty much the gamut of environmental issues.
However the casino boom along Mississippi's golf coast happened so quickly and on such
a large scale that state and federal regulators admit they were caught off guard by some
of the environmental problems that have surfaced.
Among them is pollution, especially from highway 90, the major artery that brings gamblers
to the coast.
Hotel's line one side of the highway and a seawall lines the other which means there
is no room to widen the road.
Steve Oivanky says his cars build up on the roadway so does the pollution.
In addition the lure of good paying jobs is attracting out of state residents to southern
Mississippi.
As a result Steve Oivanky says housing and waste treatment are issues state and community
leaders are being forced to address.
Those people have to build houses because there is a housing shortage.
And all the sewer areas where they could build houses are already taken.
So they are going to go out in the counties and put in septic tanks in houses where they
probably will not work.
That's the major non-point source pollution problem facing us.
It's where to put these people, how to get the sewage systems out to the people to prevent
the pollution of the waters.
Also run off from septic tanks has already polluted some oyster beds located along coastal
areas.
However the recent construction of two waste treatment plants is helping to deal with
the problem and more facilities are planned.
Oivanky says the Department of Marine Resources has instituted a resource management effort
to deal with the environmental effects of gambling.
The biggest thing ever happened in Mississippi.
But we didn't plan for it.
We planned small and it came in big and we were caught by surprise.
So our commission asked us to develop a comprehensive plan to look at the long term future effects
of this.
And we've got all of the state, local, federal, regulatory agencies, all the cities and
counties, all the environmental groups, concerned citizens.
We're sitting down talking about the problems, how we can best manage it and what we need
to do in the future so we don't call it by surprise again.
Before gambling came to Mississippi's Gulf Coast, the state was running a deficit.
Unemployment was high and many of the coastal areas were deserted industrial sites.
Oivanky says the goal now is a delicate balancing act, trying to maintain the economic engine
while protecting the environment at the same time.
He says planners are trying to steer development away from sensitive areas with wetlands and
marshes and towards places that can handle the pace of development, something that was
not done previously.
For the Environment Show, I'm Stephen Westcott.
The Environment Show is a national production.
It's made possible by the W. W. Alton Jones Foundation, the William Bingham Foundation,
the Turner Foundation, the J. M. Kaplan Fund, and Heming's Motor Nose, the monthly Bible
of a collector car hobby, www.hemings.com.
We'd like to hear from you.
The Philosophy Environment Show, the number is 1-888-49-Green.
That's 1-888-49-Green.
I'm Linda Anderson and this is Eard to the Ground with stories about people affecting
change in the environment.
This week, riding on a new way in environmentalism.
Surfers make up a very unique, youth-infused subculture.
The culture has its own music, beginning in the 60s with groups like Dick Dale and the
Del Tones and the Beach Boys.
It has its own clothing styles like surfer baggies and bikinis, as well as its own movie
genre.
Beach blanket bingo anyone.
But what people may not realize is that surfers have their own environmental group as well.
It's called the Surf Rider Foundation.
According to the organization's executive director Pierce Flynn, surf riders was created
in 1984 at the Surf Rider Beach in California.
It began in a fight to defend one of the world's best surfing waves at Nalibu, which was
framed from the digit days on through, from being destroyed from water pollution and
also a growing development on the point that would have all hit the sand flow.
Thus, it started people protecting things they loved most, surfing areas and surfing
waves.
A user group, much like Ducks Unlimited, who work to conserve their playground, surf
riders now based in San Clemente, California is comprised of about 25,000 members in the
United States.
Most but not all are surfers.
Other members include swimmers, coastal dwellers, beach comers, and a host of celebrities such
as Jewel, Jeff Bridges, Tom Hanks, and of course, the Beach Boys.
The group also has 40 chapters in four other countries where surfing is big, Australia,
France, Japan and Brazil.
Glenn, who has been surfing since the 5th grade, says surf riders is providing CPR to
surfing areas and the ecosystems that surround them.
So that we're talking about preserving, again, the rarity of these breaking waves, they're
not destroyed by ill-planned human projects like harbors or groins and jetties.
And there also has a part of its mission to preserve the biodiversity in the beach area.
Everything from the dolphins that play, that also surf the waves to the bird life and
the whole watershed, as well as the water quality.
Much of our national coastal waters are in danger of pollution.
And that is a health hazard to not only surfers but to all who swim in the ocean.
If you put together all the excellent surfing areas in the world, Flynn says it would probably
span only seven miles.
Those sites include the bonsai pipeline in Hawaii and cure a beach in Australia.
What makes them perfect is their perfection, their natural power and vibrancy and the
way that they'll break a lot of point, usually the length of the perfect wave.
Of course, there's lots of ways that can be written, but the perfect ones are absolute
wonders of nature.
One of a kind wonders of nature like old faithful or Niagara Falls.
Flynn explains that surf is the area of breaking waves.
He says as ocean swells are blown across the ocean from wind or storms generated in places
like New Zealand or Alaska, they move rapidly towards coastlines around the world.
As they do, they form swells.
And as they come in contact with the shallowing water, whether it's a coral reef like in Hawaii
at the bonsai pipeline or a continental shelf in California or the outer bank, the waves
swells will even, they'll pitch and they'll throw out and create surf, they'll create waves
and those waves can be written and that's the magic.
Surfers play in a small portion of what Flynn describes as a coastal watershed.
This watershed includes coastal mountains where melting snow runs all the way down to the
beach.
It's a vibrant environment he says made up of wildlife that includes deer, dolphins,
crabs, seals, whales, a variety of birds and humans.
The animals come for food, the people for recreation.
Flynn says in California alone about 95% of the coastal wetlands have been destroyed,
lost to pollution, development and boating.
The optimistic surf riders work to restore the natural system through beach cleanups,
educational programs and the legal system.
Anne Pierce Flynn says they've just started a new chapter called Snowrider aimed at snow
borders and skiers designed to increase environmental awareness among those who ride frozen water.
The surf riders foundation is proving that there can be more to surfing than just riding
the waves.
With ear to the ground, I'm Linda Anderson.
And now it's time for the Earth calendar.
We can expect an early spring.
That's the message from Puxitani Phil, the climate forecasting groundhog that comes out
of his hole every February 2 to make his annual prediction.
Phil did not see a shadow this year, which means we can expect less than six weeks of winter.
The groundhog doesn't exactly say when winter will end and it's only the 13th time in
113 years of making predictions that Phil said spring will arrive early.
What's even more interesting is that Phil has never been wrong.
According to Mike Johnson, he's a member of the inner circle of the Puxitani Groundhog Club.
We find that those people who question the science have perhaps missed the point.
Johnson says this is because Groundhog's day is rooted in European folklore.
It was brought to this country in the late 1800s, predominantly by German settlers.
They settled in this area.
Candlemas day was a holiday that was celebrated.
Candlemas day is the middle day of winter.
It's six weeks after the beginning of winter and six weeks till the end.
We use the term commonly cabin fever.
And fever heads and significant meaning to those folks who were living in cabins in
1870 and were four miles away from their closest neighbor and had three feet of snow piled
up against their door.
It was perhaps a convenient reason to get together with your neighbors and share a good time
to break up the boredom.
With tongue firmly in cheek, Mike Johnson says Phil is very old.
We don't know how old he was when we inherited him, but we've had him for 113 years.
Now normal Groundhogs.
Groundhogs that don't have the rural bread lines that Phil has live on average of seven
or eight years.
That's a normal lifespan for a Groundhog, at least in this part of the country.
For being 113, certainly is the exception to that.
Johnson attributes Phil's longevity to the small amount of Groundhog nog.
He receives once a year from members of the Groundhog Club.
It extends his life another seven years.
Mike says he tried it once, but it only made his hair turn gray.
He also says members of the Groundhog Club are often asked why they wear top hats and
tuxedos on that special day that Phil makes his predictions.
Because of full standing in the animal world, I mean, again, he's not just a Groundhog,
he's true royalty.
Those 15 of us who are called upon to support him and protect him, we even have some
members who are trying to take a bullet form if need be.
But our formal attire is only in keeping with his position within the animal world.
When he isn't making long-range forecasts, Phil resides comfortably in a federally
inspected habitat at the town's municipal building with his wife, Philis, and cousin
Barney.
Phil apparently made no mention as to whether global warming will contribute to a shorter
winter season this year.
I guess we'll just have to wait till next year.
And if Phil emerges from his whole wearing sunglasses, Bermuda shorts, and suntan oil,
you'll know things are surely changing in Puxitani, Pennsylvania.
You're listening to the Environment Show, and I'm Peter Burley.
Still ahead, a craftsman hand makes canoes entirely out of wood.
The historic dugout has evolved into a piece of art.
We talk green about ski resorts and national forests.
There's one to build more trails and lifts, but others say the resorts are too big already
and we don't need any more.
A green tip on a humanitarian urge that should be resisted.
And we go hiking through passes in the Colorado Rockies with author T.A. Barron, mountain views
and fields of wildflowers uplift our souls.
Stay with us.
Picture yourself in a canoe.
You're drifting quietly along a slow winding river.
It's a lazy summer day and the noise of modern life seems a million miles away.
For many of us it's a great way to spend an afternoon, and native carabins agreed.
The word canoe is taken from the language of carabinions who dug out trees that were
strong enough to be used as boats.
In the 1600s native Americans began making the traditional style of canoe that we're familiar
with today.
European settlers copied their ideas, and it was the French who established the first canoe
factory in Quebec in the late 1700s.
Today many man-made materials like plastic are used in place of wood.
But in the Berkshire Mountains of Eastern New York there is a carpenter who is helping
to keep the traditional form of canoe building alive.
Stephen Westcott takes us there.
You can take a look at some differences in boats.
You might look at it and think it's a kayak, but actually it's a one man swam canoe.
Low volume versus now this would be like a swam race boat and this is like a marathon
race boat.
Totally different design.
That's Greg Sowers describing some of the boats he has at Old Timers Pleasure Craft
based in Canaan, New York near the Massachusetts border.
Greg is a retailer of paddles, life jackets, fiberglass kayaks and virtually everything
else you need to get started.
Besides the unique spalling of Old Timers, that's OLDYMERS, what makes this business really
special is the cedar stripped canoes that are handcrafted here.
You start off selecting the boat you want to build.
So if you can get a set of plans, that's the best thing and you get a table of offsets.
That's all the numbers on there that you would set up to get your forms made from.
So that's called lofting actually.
You'll loft all your numbers on paper and draw your lines out and then you'll get your
station shapes.
You'll just transfer them on wood and cut them out.
A station is a piece of wood cut in the shape of a hemisphere.
They are mountain-out wooden horses and set about a foot apart to form a mold.
Cedar wood strips that are about an inch wide by a quarter inch thick and as long as needed
are placed over the mold and glued.
Sometimes the planks are heated which helps Greg bend them into place.
They form to each other and staple them onto the forms.
Once the glue sets up, they pretty much lock themselves into each other and they stay
that shape.
Then just continue on, strip after strip until it's complete.
Once the planks are in place and the glue is dry, the form of the canoe is established.
But a lot more work lies ahead mainly in the form of hand sanding.
On the outside I'll spend 10, 12 hours faring it out.
Then on the inside I'll spend that much again sanding.
You do a awful lot of sanding, a lot of cedar dust in the air.
When sanding is complete a fiberglass coating is applied to the entire canoe.
It's a clear glass skin that you won't see and use epoxy resin on that.
For today's kind of boating, it keeps a wooden boat practically maintenance free and the
strength that that skin adds to it makes it a lot stronger than traditionally built
boats, which is a big plus.
It takes Greg about 6 to 8 weeks to build a canoe.
The finished product is a beautiful cedar vessel.
The clear coating really makes it shine as it rides across the water.
They're so attractive that Greg says passers-by often buy them on the spot, which makes
it difficult to build up an inventory.
He started building fiberglass canoes about 20 years ago, but for the past 6 years he
has been building only wooden canoes by hand.
It's been Greg's dream to build boats full time and with the renovation of his barn
complete he now has a workshop to make his dream come true.
One of the most unique features about Greg's business is that he custom designs a canoe
to fit a customer's specifications.
I'll take their ideas and work it out and make a boat that they want.
They want something different out of a boat.
With a wooden boat you can change it somewhat.
You take a boat, a fiberglass boat and a mold, how it comes out is how it's going to be.
No changes, but with a wooden one you can change a few forms and stretch it out a little
bit, make it wider if you want.
An old timers canoe sells for $100 a foot with a larger guide boat selling between $3500
and $5,000.
It may seem pricey to some folks, but these boats will literally last a lifetime.
More importantly perhaps, is that Greg is carrying on a historical form of woodworking and traditional
form of transportation.
With the name of my shop, old timers, some people come to me and they think I'm the old
timers.
I say to them, I say I'm not the old timers, the boats are, the design of the boats.
I'm taking a lot of designs that were used back in the late 1800s and bringing them back.
And again, I'm taking some of the old boats that a lot of people would just trash out through
all the motor, burn them and restore them.
The old guides back in the old days, they knew how to get around and they knew how to
design boats.
Whether it be white water rapids or calm flat water, Greg enjoys all forms of canoeing
and kayaking.
What makes it even more special for him is the sense of pride he gets when riding in
a canoe that takes him to those special places the natural world offers.
For the Environment Show, I'm Stephen Westcott.
We are talking green and I'm Peter Burlite.
It is key season and while many skieriers around the country had a mediocre Christmas season,
most of us who are skiers think the best is yet to come when the days get warmer and
the sun is brighter and we have more light.
It turns out that about a quarter of the nation's 525 downhill ski areas operate on land that's
owned by the U.S. Forest Service.
That means you and me as taxpayers.
And the forest service then leases the land to companies that build and operate the resorts.
But despite flat market demand, multi-million dollar expansions are now being planted many
areas whose names you've probably heard like Veil and Keystone and Colorado.
There are environmental groups who are opposing much of this ski development on public lands
and in some cases they're going to court in an effort to stop it.
So we're going to look at this issue should the Forest Service be leasing more land to
ski area operators.
And I have two guests who know a lot about this subject and probably don't agree on anything.
One is Scott Silver.
He is executive director of a group called Wild Wilderness.
He's an environmental group based in Bend, Oregon and he is also a member of the Ski
Area Citizens Coalition which is a recently formed group focusing on environmental and social
impact of resorts.
He joins us from Oregon.
And also with me is Geraldine Hughes.
She's director of public policy with the National Ski Area Association.
She's in Colorado and her trade organization represents ski resorts and others that are
related to the ski industry.
Welcome to you both.
And Scott Silver, let's start with you.
Most people think of skiing as a pretty healthy family sport.
It's certainly more benign when you think about public lands than logging and mining.
So why shouldn't ski areas be permitted to expand?
Well, because amongst other things there is no need for it.
You said that the demand has been flat.
In fact over the last 10 years there has been a declining demand which really doesn't justify
taking more land and converting it to the particular use of a ski area.
And even though the areas may be able to do this successfully and people enjoy it your
sense is that enough is enough?
Well, no.
Simply there isn't need.
The land has other values to convert land into a ski area.
Generally means disrupting habitat for the animals that live there.
It means cutting the trees that live there.
Excuse me, is it trees that eat this there?
And it means taking public lands and turning it to a dedicated use, the dedicated use,
being downhill skiing.
I would just contend there are other competitive uses and a lesser is a need for a ski area
expansion.
There's no reason to go ahead with it.
I think he is obviously errant.
If I could jump in?
Absolutely.
Where do you come out on that issue?
What I guess God is saying is you don't need it.
Just a couple things.
As first I think it's really important to put things in perspective.
Today public lands ski resorts occupy less than one tenth of one percent of national forest
lands.
On that small area they accommodate 30 million skier visits a year.
Second, I disagree with the characterization that we're looking at declining demand or
collapse market demands.
I think that the ski industry is a very future looking industry and we're trying to plan
for and not ignore the demographic trends that we see coming towards us.
First of all, we've got the echo boom generation, which is 78 million strong and will provide
unbelievable demand for outdoor recreation.
We've got the aging but very active and wealthy baby boom generation that's placing a huge
emphasis on quality of life.
People generally are seeking quality of life as a priority in their increasingly hectic
lives.
Well, Gerald, let me ask you something about one of the criticisms about the industry.
Recent press reports, and I'm sure you've seen them, there are those that say, hey, the
ski industry really isn't selling downhill skiing.
That's incidental.
What they're really doing is selling condos and home sites and they're in the real estate
business, which is what is spurring the business of expansion.
So people can have condos that they can ski right up to from the resort.
How do you respond to that argument?
Well, first of all, I think it's wrong to give the impression that hotel or real estate
development is going on on the public lands for starters because that is taking place on
private land that is adjacent to or next to the ski areas.
And resorts are just meeting the demands of the public in providing better facilities
and all of the amenities that the public is demanding from resorts.
And Scott Silver, the argument is there is the demand out there.
It's a legitimate use.
Well, probably more people ski than do other things, so why not?
Because the demand is going down.
I did my own skiery here in Bendoregan.
Skie numbers are down from 650,000, 10 years ago down to 580,000 and a trend is downward.
I'd like to respond to what Geraldine said however about the fact that skiers only occupy
a small amount of land.
Yes, it's 190,000 acres.
But I can tend that just like an acorn is but a small thing.
It will grow into a very, very large tree.
In much of the same way is all-terrain vehicles, spread notches weed seeds as they travel around
and cut paths through the forest, changing the forest.
So the ski areas lead to urban development, commercial development and sprawl.
Ski areas occupy a small area but they impact an enormous area far, far larger than the
small area they're spoken of.
The other point is even though the commercial development, the condos are being built on
private land, often that private land was public land that was recently traded in land swaps
with very, very questionable value to the public.
Scott, I think that's a gross generalization but I also just want to ask out the question,
wouldn't you rather see the impacts of the public recreating on the forest taking place
at a managed recreation site like a ski area rather than uncontrolled in all over the place
because ski areas in fact manage the impacts in an environmentally sensitive manner?
I mean, isn't that a better alternative than having a free-fraud on the public land?
No, because you're old and people are not going to be doing downhill skiing except at ski areas.
And the people who use areas that are ones that ski areas would like to expand and to have
a perfectly good right to youth land.
A very highly-condescited area is a telluride ski area expansion right now.
We're back country skiers, people who ski without the aids of lifts are saying that the only
remaining decent back country area is going to be co-opted for downhill development and
literally not for downhill development but for resort development.
I'd like to get into this issue of the Resort Development question though because it
is argued that the tremendous expansion which is argued where the money is has huge land
use impacts.
Geraldine, to what degree is selling condos and home sites critical to the successful
financing and financially successful operation of a ski area?
The people will say, hey, they're not making money skiing anymore.
What they're doing is making money selling houses and that's what the game is.
Is that a fair criticism?
No, I think you're probably basing that on a small number of the larger destination
resorts.
As you said at the start of the show, there are 500 ski areas out there and I guarantee
you that for many of them they are very small, mom and pop operations that provide skiing
as the main attraction.
There are the larger destination resorts that provide lodging and other amenities as
well as ski areas but I would just like to emphasize too that it's real easy to point
to the resort as the sole growth driver or culprit for growth in a resort community.
I think that that is no longer the case.
I think that people are moving to mountain communities in large numbers for reasons that
have nothing to do with skiing and snowboarding.
All right, well let's go back to skiing for a moment.
Scott, I gather your sense is that enough is enough and we really don't need to devote
any more public land to this.
I'd be interested in whether Geraldine thinks there are places in which public land should
not be turned over to proposed ski areas and if there are, how do you decide which ones
they are?
I would just like to say for starters, when we talk about turning over an area to a
scary, you know, public land area to a scary, the areas to which skiers are expanding have
already been designated by the Forest Service as suitable for resort development, sometimes
decades or even 20 years in advance of the actual expansion.
And I think that's a very important clarification that I would like to make on the basis of something
that Scott had said earlier.
These are lands, you know, they're not wilderness areas, they're areas that have been identified
as having the best and most suitable use for ski area development.
Geraldine, you have a response to that?
Sure.
Sure.
In Oregon there is a proposed development propellican buttes ski area.
It's the first new ski area that's been proposed in many, many years.
The environmental community is saying there could not be a worst area selected if one specifically
tried to.
It is designated bald eagle habitat.
It is designated on late successful reserve which means old growth forests.
To create the ski area would destroy habitat next to a wildlife refuge.
It is the worst possible area but it happens a large real estate company has built a resort
at the base and now would like to improve the value of that land by creating the ski
area.
So, the other reason for that and in Oregon the ski numbers as I mentioned before are
down dramatically to create another ski area so close to Mount Bathford is simply the cannibalizing
the existing skier base and to move it somewhere else and there's no other reason for that
than real estate speculation.
Scott, what I heard Geraldine saying is that there is a planning process and admittedly
perhaps a lot of these areas were designated before we had the sensitivity that we now
have for an age of species in the light.
Does the planning process, if it works properly, ensure that lands that should be protected
or protected is there a process that works or is the whole process?
Absolutely.
There is a hard planning process that the public is very intimate involved.
Great.
Scott, what's your sense on that?
The process doesn't work whatsoever.
In fact, for the Pelican Dute area, the person on the Forest Service Committee who was
responsible for making the decision also happens to be the president of the Chamber of Commerce
of Climate Falls, the local town.
The level of bias to promote ski area development within the Forest Service overrule all scientific
judgment.
Basically, the Forest Service is looking to ski areas as revenue generation and each individual
area sees their ability to get some sort of revenue from their local ski area development
and the process is being exceedingly perverted for financial gain both.
Geraldine, you're a reaction of that?
I think the process is being perverted by abuse of, for example, the National Environmental
Policy Act process.
Environmental groups are continuously using statutes like NEPA or the Endangered Species
Act to get to your end result, which is just absolutely no expansion of ski areas whatsoever
under any circumstances.
We have a process and we have laws and the ski areas are doing very well-compliant with
those laws.
The Geraldine, Pelican, but the parking lot for 2000 cars would be directly an identified
ball, eagle habitat that's been protected already in a wilderness study area.
I'm sure that all proper mitigation will be done by the ski area and required by the Forest
Service if there is that type of habitat located within the area of the ski area.
OK, well I'm afraid our time is up.
We've been talking about skieries on federal lands.
Should they be expanded?
My guests have been Geraldine Hughes from the National Ski areas Association and Scott Silver
from the Environmental Group Wild Wilderness.
We'd like to know what you think about this issue.
Give us a call.
Our number is 1-888-49-Green.
We've been talking green and I'm Peter Burling.
You can tell us all sorts of things about yourself and what we can do better than
in the Environment Show by responding to our questionnaire at our website.
This is Green Tips.
Tips on how you can save the world and your everyday life.
When I was in environmental conservation commissioner in my state, I learned mid-winter
is when people call with questions about feeding deer.
The human instinct to supply food for wild creatures perceived to need nourishment seems
almost universal.
With respect to feeding deer, it is also almost universally a bad idea.
Microbes and the stomach of a deer digest its food.
And the microbes that digest the woody brows and your favorite backyard shrubs the deer
of eating all winter cannot cope with a hay, corn or peanut butter sandwich as you may
wish to offer.
Stuffing the wild creature with food it can't digest may do more harm than letting it
go hungry.
But wait you say, don't bother me, I don't feed deer.
But the lesson is still important.
Terrible results have frequently occurred from well-intentioned human intervention in natural
systems like filling in wetlands or killing wolves.
When we think we're doing good, we usually don't have the humility to ask whether we
were doing the right thing.
But we need to try, because saving natural systems may be more important than trying to
fix them.
That's our green tip for this week.
We all have places that are special to us.
For some it's a city street, for others it's deep in the wilderness.
For author TA Baron it's the Colorado Rockies, where a mountain ridge makes you feel like
you can face anything.
In this portrait of place, Baron reads from his book titled, To Walk in the Wilderness,
a Colorado Rocky Mountain Journal.
For the first three weeks of our month on the trail, we saw almost none of Colorado's
renowned blue sky.
Instead we saw great quantities of rain, fog, rising mist, falling hail and sideways blowing
sleet.
Then at last, the clouds lifted.
The sky brightened as did our moods.
Here is my journal of day 25 from To Walk in Wilderness.
From our perch on top of the pass, it is easy to follow the rising sun's advance over
land and sky.
Rosie Beams strike the clouds transforming them, while the mountains follow one radiant step
behind.
The luminous procession continues, moving over one ridge then the next, one summit then
another.
Until at last, the entire world as far as we can see is bathed in a new morning light.
The breeze blows crisply, tussling our sleeping bags.
It is dawn.
Passing through a long alleyway of blue bells, we drop over east avalanche paths, stark towers
of stone etched against the rich blue sky line the ridge.
Westward, we can see dozens of drainages, contorted and wild.
Snow clings to the shadowed surks, while red paintbrush, blue lupine and yellow sink foil
make the meadow under our feet ripple with vibrant colors.
This is a day to go on forever.
As we stride along the ridge, we hear the continuous rising and falling of wind and
the passes, streams in the valleys, birds in the cloudless sky and shifting rocks in
the ravines, all combining in a single, sonorous, fugue.
As the ridge stretches before me, so it seems does life.
Full of hope and opportunity and challenge, today I feel ready to face anything.
Even as the late afternoon light deepens the hues and shadows, signaling the inevitable
approach of night, I feel far more joy at having lived this day than grief at having lost
it.
By a tarn surrounded with marsh marigolds, we make camp.
Sunset comes slowly and intensely, reflected on the craggy spires of meadow mountain and
the neighboring peaks.
When I wake before dawn, my sleeping bag is coated with frost, as if the stars have
descended during the night and lodged there, sparkling for a while.
That was TA Baron, reading from the book he co-authored, To Walk and Wilderness, a Colorado
Rocky Mountain Journal.
It is published by Westcliffe Publishers Inc.
Thanks for being with us in this week's Environment Show.
I'm Peter Burley.
To learn how Poxytani Phil will gamble the federal environmental budget way on a Mississippi
riverboat, order a copy of the program, call 1-800-323-9262, order show number 476.
The Environment Show is a national production which is solely responsible for its content.
Alan Chartock is executive producer, Stephen Westcliffe is producer and Ray Grapp is audio
engineer.
The Environment Show is made possible by the W.A.L.N.
East Foundation, the William Bingham Foundation, the J.M. Kaplan Fund, the Turner Foundation,
and Heming's Motor News, the monthly Bible of the Collector Car Hobby, www.hemmigs.com.
Be good to the earth and join us next week for the Environment Show.
